


lord asriel’s excellent guide to securing sufficient expeditionary funding

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Asriel Has Great Ideas, Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon, Stelmaria Is Very Exasperated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: or how Lord Asriel came to have the (fake) head of Stanislaus Grumman in his possession.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	lord asriel’s excellent guide to securing sufficient expeditionary funding

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, thanks to Marie because all my HDM fics come out of conversations with her. And we couldn't resist this one.
> 
> T/W: Asriel being an insensitive jerk, Asriel referring to the Tartars as savages because he isn't a nice man.

John Parry hangs onto the rope they’ve strung between shelters, narrowing his eyes behind his goggles. The storm had howled in over the ice cap a week ago and shows absolutely no sign of stopping anytime soon. They’d nearly made it back to civilisation without incident – unheard of in an expedition like this – but, as if to make up for the audacity of getting away with it, the weather has decided to throw all it has at them for no reason at all. John is no stranger to hopeless situations, but even he has to admit that this is looking bad.

Sayan’s claws dig hard into his shoulder as he ducks into the shelter he’s sharing with the expedition co-leader, Lord Asriel Belacqua. The man, as expected, hasn’t moved an inch since John left for his twice-daily round of the camp to check on men and equipment. He’s writing furiously as he has been all day, and his snow-leopard daemon is stretched out at his side, paws nearly in the naphtha heater. John pulls off his snow goggles, takes the portable chair and leans forward into the little puddle of warmth too.

“What’s it looking like?” Asriel asks eventually, deigning to look up from whatever he’s working on.

“Dire and getting worse,” John replies. “The anbaric generator is on its last legs. Whole thing has two days to live, tops.”

Asriel sighs, but it’s really more of a snarl. “Bloody equipment. Why they don’t fund us properly I’ll never understand.”

“Can you blame people for not understanding the Arctic if they’ve never been here?”

“Yes, of course I do,” Asriel says with an incredulous raise of his eyebrows. His daemon’s eyes flicker open and shut, bright green.

John doesn’t bother to deign this with a response. Asriel is like this, he’s found – not willing to understand someone else’s point of view unless he’s dragged to it kicking and screaming. It would be an argument for the sake of an argument, and John cannot bring himself to care. They’ve got enough on their plates without him provoking a facile fight. Sayan jumps down to his lap, and he pets her neck feathers absently, trying to keep his mind off the very real possibility of death. The thing about hopeless situations is that nothing good comes from giving up. He’s got to keep going – for himself, and all the people under his leadership.

“Well,” Asriel says after a while, putting aside his writing and reaching for their kettle, for two mugs. “Whichever of us survives this can use the other’s frozen remains to prove the importance of proper expedition funding.”

Asriel also has a well-honed flair for the dramatic. John allows himself to be blackly amused. “It might work.”

“There’s no might about it, man. Those Jordan scholars are an easily intimidated lot. Your head in ice would be a powerful bargaining chip.”

“Excuse me, _mine_?”

“The person to die first will be you, Grumman,” Lord Asriel says, haughty, handing John a mug of tea. “I have more to live for than you. A destiny, if you will.”

John feels a sudden and very unexpected rage flare brightly in his chest. Sayan ruffles her wings to make herself look bigger and he seriously considers throwing his scalding tea right back in Asriel’s face. What does Asriel know of John’s life, of all the things he’s lost, all the things he’s trying to get back to? He thinks briefly of Elaine, of the son he never got the chance to know.

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” he says, low, furious.

The snow-leopard is swishing her tail back and forth in warning. Asriel looks up from his own tea.

“A lover, Grumman?” he asks, mocking. “A child? Scholarly acclaim? Any other little insignificances? I thought you were a solitary man of science.”

“Watch what you’re calling insignificant,” John tells him. Sayan’s claws are digging into his knee now, and he takes a deep breath, forces himself to calm down. It’s hardly Asriel’s fault his own arrogance stops him seeing anything beyond himself. It’s hardly Asriel’s fault he’s never going to be able to find love the way John has, to see his fellow humans as anything other than stepping stones to power and glory. He’s an apocalypse in human form, as Elaine might say in one of her poems. The thought of her makes him ache.

Asriel holds his gaze for a second, and then pulls his paper back onto his lap. John sits back against the chair, tries to occupy his brain with thoughts of how they’re going to get out of this situation. They have to. He refuses to be a stepping stone for Asriel. It’s not going to happen.

*

**Six years later**

Stelmaria is the one to spot the body, lodged in a crevasse.

“Might have something useful,” she says to Asriel when he stops beside her, looks down at the unfortunate sod. Dead bodies aren’t that common; they’re usually crushed by the movement of the ice-sheet or buried in snow. It’s unusual to find one like this, and Asriel suddenly remembers a conversation he’d had years ago, hisses in a breath. Stelmaria narrows her eyes, lashes her tail. “I don’t like that sound.”

“How long has Grumman been missing?” he asks her.

“Eighteen months, you know that as well as me,” she says. “Asriel…”

“What are the chances of him turning up alive between now and the time we get back to Oxford?”

“Are we _really_ going to do this?”

“I thought it was quite a good idea, actually.”

Stelmaria makes her _why, Asriel, why_ noise, one that Asriel has become intimately familiar with over the years of their life, and bounds down into the crevasse. It’s a stretch of their bond, but he breathes through the discomfort, leans over to see her sniffing at the man’s body, tapping it with her paw.

“He’s been scalped,” she calls up. “And he’s had one of those holes cut in his skull.”

“Grumman was always friendly with those Tartar savages,” Asriel calls back. “And he would absolutely do some fool thing like let them mutilate him, the crazy fucker.”

“You’re one to talk about fool things and crazy fuckers.”

“There’s a difference between ambition and pointless rituals, come on,” he says. “Can you drag the body up out of there?”

“It’s pretty lodged. Perhaps you could get the ice-saw and just cut the head off? It would be easier. I think we have a vacuum flask somewhere, too.”

“Thorold will know where it is,” Asriel says. “Good point. We’ll do that.” He laughs, suddenly, up at the sky. “I can’t wait to see their faces.”

Stelmaria bounds up, back onto the surface, her paws sinking deep into the snow. “You’re a _menace._ ”

“How else would we get things done?” he asks, resting his hand briefly on the top of her soft head. “Come on. We’ve got scholars to frighten.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come & hang out with me on Tumblr @if-fortunate :D


End file.
